The New Generation

1984, Jack Tramiel leaves Commodore and purchases the
computer/home entertainment division of Atari, leaving the
arcade division to owners Warner Communications. As new
technology develops, Mr. Tramiel pushes Atari Corp. to new computing limits but stops the game consoles market. Atari Corp. bid to acquire the powerful Amiga Lorraine 16/32-bit computer but lost it to Commodore, so his team would design it's own new power PC. Based on the same Motorola 68000 CPU with a powerful yet user-friendly graphics environment desktop that made MS-DOS look ancient in comparison, and more affordable so anyone can own one, at home and/or office. The powerful GUI code was created by Digital Research; GEM (Graphics Environment Manager).The STs are not compatible with 8-bit hardware or software..|CLICK IMAGES BELOW FOR IMAGE GALLERIES...

Atari 520ST & 1040STMarch 1985. Atari debuts the ST {for sixteen/thirty two
bit, the new Motorola 68000 microprocessor capacity} .
Two models, the 130ST and 520ST, are shown in prototype. Atari Corp. states they will have the new windowing GEM desktop and TOS {the o/s} in ROM and release both models by mid 1985.

Summer 1985, the 520ST is finally released. With MIDI in/out, external 3˝" floppy drive, DMA hard drive, parallel printer, and RS232C serial ports built-in. Also a ROM cartridge port (128K), and mouse/joystick ports. They cancelled the 130ST design due to GEM and TOS not fitting within the 192K ROM chips. The early 520ST's had to boot from disk and left about 300K RAM. This was corrected within the year.

Early 1986, Atari Corp. returns with a new ST model. The 1040ST
shipped soon afterwards and became the consumer reports' best
buy for the year. Another prototype, the 260ST, was also
cancelled. The 1040ST had a built-in double sided floppy drive,
soon afterwards the 520ST was re-designed with the internal drive
also, as well as a TV port. !!Click on images for more!!

Atari MEGA STNew for 1987, the MEGA
ST offers all the early ST features in a new case with room for
expandability and an internal hard drive. The new detached
keyboard freed up desk space while the case could support the monitor. The Atari MEGA ST was available with 2Mb or 4Mb RAM standard, memory is socketed for easy upgrading.

Portables; STacy& ST Book{1988} After
months of development and FCC tests, Atari releases it's portable
ST computer dubbed STacy. STacy offered the complete ST keyboard,
an LCD screen simulating 640x400 hi-res, and a mini-trakball to
work the pointer. STacy was not very popular since it killed
batteries quickly, and using an AC adapter limited portability.

ST Book was shown around
1989 but only few were ever released. It was much smaller and
lighter than Stacy. It did not have an internal or external
floppy disk port. Atari also shown a keyboard-less system named
the STylus, also called the ST PAD, which was never released.
This used a touch-sensitive screen with a pointer.

Atari 520STE & 1040STE1989, back to the original cases but with
new Enhanced features.

New features include an
expanded video pallet of 4096 colors , an improved 8 channel PCM
stereo sound chip, two audio-out ports, the blitter co-processor,
and two new 15-pin analog controller ports.
Inside, many chips are socketed for easy replacement. RAM is now
on SIMM cards for easy upgrading.
New TOS 1.06/1.62 was improved to handle the new features.

Atari MEGA STE

1991, The last 16-bit ST released, the MEGA STE offers these
changes over the 520/1040STE in a TT style case...left-side view....behind view>New
case which can support a monitor
>new expansion slot
>new custom detachable keyboard
>modified Motorola 68000 CPU, running at 16MHz